The Song of the Blue Bottle Tree
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4.6 • 5 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Disguised by a name she found on a tombstone and accompanying a Vietnam vet she met in a graveyard, an unconventional young snake-handler who talks to the dead returns to the ghosts of her childhood home in 1967 Arkansas...
Readers of Delia Owens, Barbara Kingsolver, Kelly Mustian, and Quinn Connor will be captivated by this haunting Southern debut about found family, folk magic, the long shadow of trauma, the salvation of human connection, and the transcendent beauty of nature.
“India Hayford’s riveting debut is an exploration of tangled familial bonds, loss, love and the redemption of fierce womanhood. Captivating storytelling that is utterly unforgettable.” —Kim Michele Richardson, New York Times bestselling author of The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek series
Genevieve Charbonneau talks to ghosts and has a special relationship with rattlesnakes. In her travels, she’s wandered throughout the South, escaping a mental hospital in Alabama, working for a Louisiana circus, and dancing at a h****y-kootch in Texas. Now for the first time in a decade, she’s allowed her winding path to bring her to the site of her grandmother’s Arkansas farmhouse, a place hallowed in her memory.
She intends only to visit briefly – to pay respects to her buried loved ones and leave. But a chance meeting with a haunted young Vietnam vet reconnects her with the remnants of a family she thought long gone, and their union becomes a catalyst for change and salvation. An abused woman and her daughters develop the courage to fight back, a ghost finds the path away from life, and a sanctimonious predator becomes the prey. In the process, Genevieve must choose between her longing for meaningful connection after years as an outsider and her equally excruciating impulse to run.
Written by a naturalist and set on the land where her family roots stretch back two centuries, The Song of the Blue Bottle Tree is a haunting story about letting go and the things we leave behind, the power of names, and the ties that bind. It is both harrowing and triumphant, a visceral Southern debut as otherworldly and beautiful as it is unflinching and wry.
*A Publishers Marketplace BUZZ BOOKS Selection*
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hayford debuts with a poignant tale of ghosts and found family. In 1967, Genevieve Charbonneau has just left the circus where she worked following a stint in an Alabama psychiatric hospital, having been committed because of her ability to communicate with ghosts. Now, yearning for her ancestral home in Arkansas, she travels aimlessly through Louisiana, "sleeping most nights in some cemetery or another." One morning, Genevieve meets Vietnam War veteran Mercer Ives, who's also on the way to Arkansas, and the pair complete the journey by motorcycle. There, she meets Mercer's mother, Wreath, who recognizes her as a distant cousin. She and Mercer visit the site where her grandmother's home once stood, now overgrown with pine trees and vines, which they pick through with help from the ghost of an American soldier killed in Vietnam, who has been benevolently haunting Mercer. Genevieve witnesses Wreath's preacher husband, John Luther, physically abusing Wreath, and then learns that he is also sexually abusing a young female parishioner. Afterward, Genevieve plots ways to expose John Luther, setting in motion a dramatic chain of events. Hayford seamlessly weaves the supernatural elements with lush details of the Southern landscape. Readers are in for a treat.
